Wednesday, January 7, 2015

DEMS RISK A BIG LOSS IF SOME DON’T CURB AMBITIONS

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer hasn’t made it
official yet, but even before she announces expected plans to retire when
her current fourth term ends in early 2017, fellow Democrats are lining up to
seek her job.

After all, a Senate seat is a plum job
anywhere, but especially for Democrats in California, where it’s been decades
since any of them lost a reelection bid for statewide office. Whoever
takes Boxer’s place can expect to become the state’s senior senator after 2018,
when the then-85-year-old Dianne Feinstein is also widely expected to retire.

But ambitious Democrats should beware:
Their eagerness, even greed, could do in their party’s hold on Boxer’s spot. It
has happened before in California, and very recently.

Of course, they don’t all have to jump
into the run to replace Boxer, who has shown no signs of making another run.
Two years later, in 2018, Feinstein’s seat will most likely be available, along
with the governor’s office now occupied by Jerry Brown.

Heated competition for all three top
jobs is likely. But friends say Newsom and Harris, longtime friends who share a
campaign manager, probably won't run against each other.

They and the rest of the large
possible field would be well advised to heed what happened in 2012 in the 31st
Congressional District in San Bernardino County, a district where Democrats
have a solid voter registration advantage and one where President Obama twice
won by healthy margins.

Obama, however, didn’t need to
worry about the top two open primary system, where only the two leading primary
election finishers make the fall runoff election.

In 2012, four Democrats went after
this seat, which had long been held by Republican Gary Miller, who was expected
to lose his job after redistricting in 2010 solidified the Democratic margin in
his district.

The first complication for the
Democrats was extremely low primary election turnout, prompted by the facts
that Obama had no primary election challenger and Republican Mitt Romney had
sewed up his party’s nomination long
before California voted in June.

Almost four times as many people voted
in the November runoff that year as in the primary. This and the plethora of
Democrats splintering their party’s vote allowed Miller and then state Sen. Bob
Dutton to finish first and second in the primary. Democrat Pete Aguilar of
Redlands, the preferred candidate of his party’s leaders, finished third with
just 23 percent of the vote.

So Democrats had to wait two years
before Aguilar managed to win the seat last fall. If at least some Democratic
prospects to succeed Boxer don’t stifle their ambitions, precisely the same
thing could happen in the Senate primary, even though no Republican has yet
expressed interest in running.

One thing for sure: If one and only
one Republican makes this race, he or she is almost certain of a runoff
slot. And if a slew of Democrats get in against two Republicans, both
Republicans could advance to November, guaranteeing the GOP an improbable
Senate seat for six years.

Look
what happened just last spring, when Pepperdine University Prof. Pete Peterson
was the only candidate with a GOP label running in a crowded field for
secretary of state. Peterson, perhaps helped along by the federal indictment of
San Francisco state Sen. Leland Yee, drew 30 percent of the vote despite being
almost a complete unknown.

He then became a tough challenger for
eventual winner Alex Padilla, another Democratic state senator at the time of
the primary.

So some of the Democratic prospects
will have to make an early choice to wait two more years before seeking higher
office, or else the party could lose a seat it has held for decades. But the
wait could seem endless and frustrating to Democrats, who would have their own
hubris to blame if they eventually lose the Boxer seat.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book,
"The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.